Earlier this year, the H&M Foundation cited “early stage” innovators in the fashion industry as part of its Global Change Award. But the award is not for innovation alone. The winners also aim to help improve the long-term sustainability of the industry.
Click here to read about this year’s award winners.
Here, Jennie Perzon, program lead at Accenture Strategy, discusses her firm’s role in the awards process, the importance of the program — which is in its second year — and the implications of Accenture’s recent Future of Sustainable Fashion report.
WWD: What are some of the outcomes anticipated by the Global Change Award?
Jennie Perzon: The Global Change Award is one of the world’s biggest challenges for early stage innovation and the first initiative of its kind within fashion. It takes on one of the biggest challenges facing today’s fashion industry — creating fashion for a growing population, while having a positive impact on the environment.
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Initiated by the non-profit H&M Foundation in 2015, in partnership with Accenture and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, the Global Change Award recognizes early innovations that can accelerate the shift from a linear to a circular fashion industry.
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The “circular economy” is an economic model designed to eliminate waste and restore valuable resources. This applies to all areas of the fashion industry, and to achieve it the fashion industry needs to reinvent itself: how to design, what materials to use, how to dye, cut and sew, ship, sell, own, use and dispose fashion. New technology, business models and materials can make this possible.
Five winners receive a 1 million euro [$1.12 million] grant and get access to a one-year innovation accelerator program provided by the H&M Foundation, Accenture and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. The accelerator offers the winners tailor-made support and access to the fashion industry. It is designed to ensure that the innovations can stand on their own as quickly as possible, and to maximize their impact on the industry.
The partnerships that stand behind the Global Change Award offer a proof of concept that cross-sector collaboration works as driver for sustainable innovation. By combining the strengths of each partner to make global open innovation possible, the Global Change Award has managed to identify thousands of concrete ideas from all over the world to help make the fashion industry more sustainable.
One of the winners of the first Global Change Award 2015 — Orange Fiber — was founded in 2014 by Adriana Santanocito and Enrica Arena and it is known for making sustainable textiles from the byproducts of citrus fruits has just partnered with Italian Label Salvatore Ferragamo on the launch of a capsule collection made using Orange Fiber to celebrate Earth Day. This venture makes Salvatore Ferragamo the first brand to ever use the material, which resembles the look and sensation of silk.
WWD: What were some of the key conclusions and trends derived from the Future of Sustainable Fashion report? And what informed the research?
J.P.: In 2016, the Global Change Award received 2,885 applications from 130 countries. By leveraging Accenture’s capabilities in analytics and data visualization on this large data set, we were able to identify interesting insights on future trends within sustainable fashion.
The report identified five megatrends shaping the future of circular fashion: Innovative Recycling; Power of Nature; Rent a Closet; Long Live Fashion, and Connected Clothes. “Innovative Recycling” outlines disruptive ways to collect worn-out clothes and capture embedded values from what previously was seen as waste. “Power of Nature” illustrates how value can be brought out of natural substances and organic processes, making garments out of everything from citrus fruits to cow manure.
‘Rent a Closet’ re-thinks the need for owning your own clothes and takes the sharing economy to the next level. ‘Long Live Fashion’ empowers second-hand and re-selling platforms, and expands the concepts of re-design to pro-long the clothing life-cycle. Lastly, ‘Connected Clothes’ describes how smart, digital clothes can enable personalization and life-tracking, as well as completely new opportunities in traceability of a garments origin.
The five mega-trends provide valuable guidance on the transformative, game-changing journey towards a circular fashion industry.
WWD: What role do consumers play on the future of sustainability in fashion?
J.P.: Consumers are becoming increasingly attuned to sustainability challenges. Changing shopping habits and expectations for more sustainable products, and new ways of consuming fashion, be it second-hand clothes or rental-solutions, is placing an emphasis on the industry to fundamentally reexamine and redesign the entire fashion value chain. Traceability throughout the production value chain, sustainable materials and a closed loop in terms of recycling are other areas were consumers put higher pressure on fashion retailers to deliver solutions. To succeed in this shift, innovation and circular thinking is key!
WWD: How can fashion apparel brands and retailers respond to these consumer demands — based on the findings of the report?
J.P.: It is important for fashion apparel brands and retailers to recognize and act on the current shift that happening in the fashion industry, reshaping how consumers want to buy, wear and recycle fashion. The five mega-trends illustrate the need for rethinking of the very core of many fashion business models and value chains, to incorporate circular concepts like share, reuse and recycle fashion.
Technology and digital empowers this shift and provides solutions to sustainability challenges and we see several examples of this in the Global Change Award. One of the winners of Global Change Award 2016 has developed an RFID-tag as thin as a thread, enabling traceability of the clothes origin fused in the actual garment. Another winner has found a way to develop organic leather from byproducts from wine production.
Fashion brands and retailers must be open to these types of new innovations and think about and find ways to incorporate them in their business models.
Click here to download the Future of Sustainable Fashion trend report.
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